


Feanorianweek 2017

by RaisingCaiin



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Parent-Child Relationship, my brain thinks we're still doing terrifying tolkien week, sorry - Freeform, tags to probably (definitely) be added, that's my only explanation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-09 02:38:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10401867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: Day #1, Maedhros: torture, adjusting/coping, beautyDay #2,  Maglor: music, redemptionDay #3, Celegorm: Hunting, Huan, Strength/Beauty, Love/UnrequitedDay #4, Caranthir: Betrayal, Humans, AppearanceDay #5, Curufin: Childhood, Feanor, Forge work, Celebrimbor, ManipulationDay #6, Ambarussa: Regrets, TwinDay #7, Nerdanel and Feanor: Mahtan, Marriage, Reunion, Traveling, Healing





	1. Maedhros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #1, Maedhros > torture, adjusting/coping, beauty

The shouting doesn’t last long – it rarely does, anymore – before Maglor storms from the tent, his bard’s voice wrecked with _grief_ and _anger_ and something that, were his brother any less a son of Fëanor than himself, Maedhros would have called _fear_.

Ridiculous, given that there is nothing more either of them need fear, ever again. Much less after tomorrow.

But Maglor has left, now, and Maedhros is alone.

“He looks to you, does he not? Hero of his childhood, perhaps, or his unwitting king?”

Or at least he should have been alone, without a soft voice melting from the air behind him.

“This one night, of all nights, can you not leave me be?” Maedhros keeps his voice crisp, if also pitched somewhat low. “Do I not merit the sanctity of my own head, my own space, the night before I surrender it?”

There is a draft of air at his back, as if someone has come to stand behind him. Not that he would see anyone, if he turned around – he has tried that particular trick before. “You say that as if I did not leave you to wallow the night of the, what have we taken to calling it now – the Arnoediad?”

“Stop. Please.” Maedhros sags forward as the reminder cuts through his will like so many strings. Both his head, and his tent, had been empty that night – when they had finally been able to stop retreating, that is. And that one night of respite had been the one in which he would have given anything to hear a voice in the dark.

“How can I, when he accuses you of such dreadful sins?”

“Oh, now you wish to acknowledge my brother?” But there is no bite to Maedhros’s words, not anymore. “The things he accuses me of – cowardice, corruption, the fool’s gamble – they are not sins, but truths. A far worse thing to be accused of. You are dead.”

“And you are beautiful.” Fingers, or something that feels very much like them, comb through his hair. “Even after all of this, so beautiful.”

“Once, perhaps, I was.” He should not respond, and Maedhros knows it, but there has never been any arguing with his – what is he to call his visitor, his lover?

His tormentor, more like. Maedhros has not seen him, truly seen him, in centuries.

“There is no perhaps. You are beautiful. The scars that these shores have imparted do not diminish the fact.” The maybe-fingers drift apart until Maedhros can maybe, almost, feel a phantom hand laid gently across the back of his neck.

“A thousand-odd cycles of torment, and warfare, and privation, and still you return to that old dart?” Maedhros does not push up into that gentle pressure, that petting. He does not. “I do not look as I did in Tirion, and I imagine that you know it.”

“I did not pay you the attention that you were due,” his tormentor agrees. The hand that is not there slides softly up Maedhros’s neck, as what feels like a first finger and what could be a thumb come to rest in the sensitive spots behind his ears.

If the hand had enough weight, Maedhros knows, or a blade, it could kill him. Not that he would be so lucky now.

“We have argued that particular injustice before, and we will not revisit it now.” Maedhros ignores the huff of amusement and the breath of air that might be “petulant” as he leans away from the draft that is stirring his hair in a possessive ruffling. “You are dead, and I am stuck here, attempting and failing to salvage something of my father’s legacy.”

“And that has do with what?”

“I would tell you to ask my brothers, but-“

“But it is only you and the renowned bard who remain,” the voice finishes for him. The amusement leaves Maedhros’s blood cold, no matter how many times the next sentence is uttered. “For we are all dead.”

“Not that any of them would mention your existence to my face when they were alive, of course,” Maedhros says, mimicking the tone of an agreeable courtier.  

“Of course.” His tormentor matches his tone, and suddenly Maedhros is tired of this game. Tired of playing by rules that have never gained him anything but pain, and more questions left unanswered.

“Will you do something for me?”

At this request there is a stillness, and a silence, that Maedhros has not experienced in centuries – a night-tide as it ought to sound. Peaceful.

And then: 

“What do you want to hear?” His tormentor does not sound gleeful at finally having gotten Maedhros to admit this need, but instead grave. Solemn. Almost tender.

This is better. (This is much, much worse.)

“Tell me-“ _That I what I am doing is right. That I am worthy. That if I die tomorrow – when I die tomorrow – I will never see you again_. “Tell me I am beautiful.”

“I will tell you that as many times as you care to hear it. You are beautiful in my eyes, Maedhros.” And his tormentor’s voice drops closer, and a gentle pressure is laid to the top of Maedhros’s head – a breeze, perhaps, or else a kiss, a gesture of possession that he would have roared and shrugged off did he have the strength. He ignores the Sindarin construct of his name, the only version that his tormentor had ever known.

“Kano. . .”

“If you must,” says the flame-haired memory of the Ainu who tormented him so many years ago. “What is one more lie, to join the virtual harem you have built for yourself? Where shall I even start – your amusing notion that you will both die tomorrow, trying and failing to regain that last Silmaril, or your persistent fantasy that I am dead?”


	2. Maglor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #2, Maglor > music, redemption

The world is fading. That is the only explanation for the utter lack of music.

Maglor pants, and the sound is harsh in his own ears. Doubled over and gasping for breath, he stopped running some time ago – he has neither the wind nor the soundness of foot to carry himself much further – but his lungs do not seem to hold the air. So he gasps, and gasps, and overhead the sea-birds wheel and scream.  

Once, they would have been mocking him, or serving as a counterpoint to the softer, wilder notes of the wind. Now, though, they are just birds, and their cries just mean that he has reached the new coastline where once would have stretched some of the greatest woods of Beleriand.

He gasps, and gasps, and waits, but the image has no poetry in it. The thought that he has almost reached the coast just conjures up memories of sand, and rocks, and water, when really it should be some elegant turn of phrase resonating with an elegiac wistfulness: _as if the heart of the land has been ripped from its ribcage, shattered beyond repair by some cruel hand of Fate. . ._

Mmm, if he’s come to repeating Findarato’s sloppy excuses for verse than he really _must_ be half-dead.

His breath has quieted somewhat, so Maglor straightens his head at least, unfolding half his body so that he is simply leaning forward, his hands on his knees and his breath merely quick pants rather than lung-rattling gasps. He prods at the idea of Finrod, dead in a filthy grotto some centuries past, to see if that stirs any poetry.

Nothing. No insights into how love long-thwarted can be twisted to unimaginable ends, no stirring figures of speech comparing transience with materiality, no melody immortalizing the clank of chain and gleam of bone. Finrod’s death no longer sounds tragic, or titillating, or even terrifying – it just seems pitiful. Painful.

Lonely.

Maglor straightens all the way up from his crouch and starts to run again. _Arrow-sharp, he unbent the knee / And away raced roaming / His great heart haunted. . ._

And the words simply desert him.

Maglor runs and he runs, and that is all – there’s no greater significance or value to it. His feet are bleeding, which just means his boots are old, not that he’s earning his salvation. The birds overhead are growing louder, and the wind is cold through the holes in his cloak, and that just means he’s closer to the Sea, not that he is approaching some crisis of faith or some great opportunity to recoup the least of his people’s treasures. _None of it means anything anymore_.

It’s not that his ears don’t work – the right one still does, at least. He punctured his left yesterday, a slip of his dagger when, in a spirit of inquiry, he had tried to determine whether the music’s fading was a purely physiological fault. No, the rush of blood seemed fairly conclusive: the fading stemmed from some more metaphysical source. Maglor had left his right ear alone. 

Limping, he reaches the cliffs at sunset.

There is no significance to the fact that he can barely stand. No reason why it matters that the sky is growing dark as he comes to stand at the edge of the world, mere steps from the Sea crashing below. No further verses of the great lay he has been writing since his father’s impassioned speech in Tirion suggest themselves.

The Noldolante will never be finished now, and even that certitude means nothing more than the fact that it is.

Maglor shakes his head, and opens his fist. A pretty rock plummets into the Sea below, and a cold white star gleams suddenly overhead, and none of it means anything at all.

 


	3. Celegorm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #3, Celegorm > Hunting, Huan, Strength & Beauty, Love/Unrequited

Their guest, the little Doriathrin princess, has been trying to spark his temper for days now – imagining, perhaps, that if angered enough he will throw down the door and storm into her cell. And then what? She will have to fight off his beastly advances? She will be able to claim malicious intent against him? She certainly cannot escape.

He doesn’t like to think such deviousness of her, beautiful creature that she is –

( _Dammit, Tyelko_ , _a memory of Aredhel whispers, women are not does!_

_Are you not? his younger self laughs, and Aredhel snarls like a she-wolf and tackles him to the ground and he laughs and laughs and concedes that she is not much like a doe at all._

_Ai, though you are nothing but a dog, she says haughtily, the mud in her hair and her dress and the glitter in her eye no impediment to her arrogance, and he loves her, but not as she seems to think he loves her)_

– but the princess’s jibes are just knowing enough, and her assumptions just imprudent enough, that she is on the cusp of growing irritating.

A considerable but not an unimaginable feat – Celegorm may be hunter-patient, but his reserves are not unlimited.

“You are hardly renowned for your intelligence, you know.”

“Eh, I know,” Celegorm confirms, as comfortable in this knowledge as he is in his old boots. That is to say, both have been molded to fit him well enough that he doesn’t doubt them anymore.

“And yet, despite such an obstacle, you would think that certain concepts could still penetrate your fair head. Concepts such as, keeping a captive in a foreign kingdom will eventually look suspicious.”

Curufin’s admonishments to keep his mouth shut be damned. “So you deem me fair?”

Behind her locked door she sputters, and perched on the sill across the hall he chuckles. 

“Ignore the warnings about political ramifications, then.” There is silence, blessed silence, for perhaps the span of a moment, and then: “You are known as the fair one for a reason,” she admits eventually, and Celegorm can feel the dagger-like begrudging beneath every word.

Damned if he wants to examine that any further. “But it is not my intelligence?”

“It is not your intelligence.” Even from across the hall to her door Celegorm can hear her huff, and a rush of cloth, as if she has stood up or sat down. “Yet there is a certain charm to even that, I am not fool enough to deny it. I can see why your brother wants us betrothed – it is more than the legitimacy our newfound kinship would lend your cause.”

Oh, no. No, no, no – Celegorm will not have a half-Maia witch set her sights on Curufin, even if she does seem powerless enough to remain trapped behind an ordinary lock and key in the bowels of Nargothrond. “My brother? Pfgh. I am the one who keeps watch over you, lady, _I_ am the one you should be concerned with.”

The princess’s amusement rings loud and clear in even her quiet words. “Is that so? You may have brought me here, fair one, but I have no doubts that you acted under orders. Or that you continue to do so.”

( _Not a doe, and what makes you think that does are meek, anyway? sing-songs Aredhel, and he loves her but they are friends, and companions, and hunting partners, and that is all)_

Celegorm can feel a snarl, or a roar, or a cry, building and rebounding in the back of his throat. “I take no orders from my younger brother, half-kin.”

“So you are the elder, then? I would not have guessed.” Her footsteps trace back and forth behind her barred door, and back and forth behind his eyes. “Where in the line of Fëanor do you two fall? You are too light, and him too dark, to be the eldest and the bard, though thanks to my father I admit I know little else about your House.” Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. . . “Didn’t one fall in the landing? That leaves four.” ( _We are not does! Aredhel cries, and there is triumph in the call_ )

He has left his seat, and is pressed to the door. He must be pleading for her to stop, but she is relentless. “And if you are the fair one, then he is left to be the Man-lover. Or the bereaved. Or – the smith.”

The last word rings with power, and Celegorm will not listen to this anymore. Her door is open and she is smiling and he is abruptly on his back on the floor, his eyes drifting shut in sleep as she steps over his body and walks, presumably, straight out of Nargothrond.

Curufin rages when he learns that their captive is gone, and because Huan has disappeared too, assumes that Celegorm’s erstwhile hound was the instrument of his new misfortune.

And Celegorm is silent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aredhel's "We are not does!" is 100% derived from "We are not things!" in Mad Max: Fury Road, guilty as charged


	4. Caranthir

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #4, Caranthir > Betrayal, Humans, Appearance

“You are a great champion of Men, are you not?” Maedhros does not even look up at him as he speaks, instead focusing on the papers strewn across his vast oak desk. Caranthir would suspect a deliberate slight if he did not know how utterly real – and really intolerable – his eldest brother’s concentration is. 

Not to mention that if Maedhros glances up too quickly, his eyes look wrong in the light. And Caranthir has gone for his sword, instinctively, more than once.

 Maedhros takes care not to look at him much anymore.

 But: “I am not,” Caranthir settles for saying. “I know nothing of Men, save Haleth and her kin.”

 If Curufin were here, he would make some snide remark about how well Caranthir must know Haleth. If Celegorm were here, he would laugh uproariously, jostling Caranthir in obvious collusion with his favored younger brother. If Maglor were here, he would toss up his hands and exclaim that he is done with the lot of them. If the Ambarussa were – well.

 But Caranthir’s brothers are not here, instead scattered to the corners of Beleriand in their own futile errands. _And that is only if not dead, and doomed, and gone beyond reach. . ._

 “But you know them,” Maedhros says absently. “You have had dealings with them recently.” 

“Forty years ago!” Caranthir exclaims.

 “As Arien goes, yes?” Maedhros waves a dismissive hand. “So, recently. And since when have you followed such a count of years, brother?”

  _Since we have lost any sense of how else time might be reckoned_ , Caranthir wants to say. _Since the Trees that I barely remember and you cannot recall much better withered and died, and we are left at the mercy of Maiar and meteorology._

_Since I realized I had no other option._

 Aloud, though, he only scoffs. “Since I first learned how, that is when, and by that accounting, forty years is a long time.”

  “If so you claim,” Maedhros says, forgetting his company enough for long enough to look up. He must mean to show his skepticism but all Caranthir can see is the orc

  _blood-red slit-eye monster-kind kin-killer_

until, realizing his mistake – or the white-knuckled grip that Caranthir is keeping to the hilt at his side – Maedhros ducks his head back to his papers with a grunt.

 “But I will not believe, not for a heartbeat, that one of the Noldor can fall so far from our roots that he would actually hold to time kept by the _Sun_ , of all things.” 

 _It matters not whether you believe it_ , and Caranthir knows this with all the surety of his bones. _For we are all none of us the Noldor – the Eldar – the creatures – we once thought we were._  

 Aloud, though, he only scoffs, and idly he wonders if this is the way that all their dealings must go from this day forward.

 “Believe what you must to keep yourself functioning. And tell me more about this Ulfang you wish me to grant land in Lothlann.”

 


	5. Curufin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #5, Curufin > Childhood, Feanor, Forge work, Celebrimbor, Manipulation

“Atar?”

The word is repeated once – twice – three times before it dawns on Curufin that it is meant for _him_. And even then, he is only sure when the silence is accompanied by a gentle tug at his sleeve.

Giving in to the inevitable, Curufin looks down at his son, realizing all over again how wrong it is to hear the name he had given his own father now given to _him_.

“What do you want, boy?” He doesn’t meant it to come out so harshly, but it _does_. And Celebrimbor’s upper lip tucks in and his lower lip wobbles but he doesn’t cry – praise the stars, he’s finally learned.

“You weren’nt at supper.”

As if he were going to eat with the mannerless ruffians his brothers have become (snarling like a pack of dogs as they pick over the bones), or the silently efficient Herenohtië (they haven’t been able to look each other in the eye since – well, _since_ ), or this snotty little creature with his mother’s brown eyes and his grandfather’s stubborn chin and his great-grandfather’s high, proud brow. . .

“I am not hungry. And since when have those dolts sent a child to do their dirty work?”

Celebrimbor looks puzzled at the question, as if wondering who else would have sent him or why speaking to his own father is dirty, and Curufin hastens to qualify before his son can get in a painfully honest answer to the question he seems to think Curufin was actually asking. Stars, children are stupid before they reach fifty.

“Why are you here?”

“I thoughted you might be hungry.” And before he can offer a woefully-needed correction to the brat’s piss-poor notions of verb conjugation, Curufin is presented with a slightly smashed heel of bread clutched in one chubby little hand and a melting puddle of butter dripping through the fingers of another chubby little hand.

For a moment, neither of them speaks. Curufin looks down, and then Celebrimbor looks down too, and together they regard the slippery globules of butter puddling at the child’s feet.

Curufin breaks the silence first. “Void, what a mess.”

Celebrimbor’s lip is wobbling again, but he nods, once, without looking up, and does not say a word. And although Curufin appreciates the silence, and the agreement – well, it’s nice but it isn’t going to fix a damn thing.

Steeling himself, he reaches down and takes his son’s wrist. The one connected to the hand clutching the bread, he’s not going anywhere near the other.

“Come with me. I will show you, this once, how to clean yourself up, and then you will demonstrate to me that you understand the process. No more butter, understand?”

Trotting along after him, his little arm raised high in the air, Celebrimbor nods again. “Is there a way I could have do it better?”

“Done, done, _done_ it better,” Curufin says, irritably. “You could have stayed where you belong, that’s what you could have done,” but it’s actually a valid question. If he had some sort of device that permitted thermal regulation, ensuring the butter remained the proper temperature during the trek to the forge from the command center – and how had Celebrimbor come all this way alone, come to think of it? Who would have left him unsupervised long enough? – then yes, come to think of it. . .  

It’s an interesting challenge, anyway, and one that could definitely bear interesting fruit for the coming days, as it’s starting to look like they will have to get used to marching on a minute’s notice, which will certainly prove hell on fine foods. Like butter, coincidentally.

When they have reached one of the basins where he would normally quench newly-forged blades, Curufin stops and crouches down next to his son. Celebrimbor is looking at him solemnly, so solemnly, expecting some great solution to address the problem he has caused, and Curufin finds that he cannot quite meet his son’s wide brown eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, I am hardly the one who made the mess here.” He releases his son’s wrist and dips his now-free hand into the water, checking its temperature. Fine. “Put that bread down – no, NO, not on the floor, imbecile – here, _here_ ” – he stuffs it into his own mouth, no sense in letting supplies go to waste – “and dip your hand.” Celebrimbor does not hesitate, dunking his arm up to its elbow into the warm water, and Curufin stifles a sigh at the utter lack of self-preservation. “What if that had been hot, eh? Never mind, don’t answer that. Now, your other hand – good – rub them together – good, good – dry them on your shirt, and come sit over here until your uncle comes to get you.” For lack of a better place to keep an eye on him, he lifts his son to the tall stool by his own rough workbench.

Celebrimbor follows the directions promptly and obediently, but apparently cannot keep quiet for even the next half-hour before Celegorm will inevitably breeze in under some stupidly transparent pretext. “What will you do?” he asks his father instead.

“ ‘Be doing.’ I will be fixing the problem you have created with your little escapade is what I will be doing,” Curufin says absently. And he expects that to be all – what better, more worthy answer could his son expect? – except, apparently. . .

“Oh,” says Celebrimbor, sitting up a little straighter on the hard wooden stool. “Can I help?”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oooh, I got all five parts of the prompt this time


	6. Ambarussa

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #6, Ambarussa > Regrets, Twin, 
> 
> Tw: suicide, brief mention of rape, gallows humor

“Makalaurë!” Maglor is alone, and weeping, but at least he has come to them! Amras is so happy to see him. “How fare-“

“Hush, now, let him get his bearings.” Caranthir brushes Amras aside and goes to stand above Maglor, who has crumbled to his knees upon seeing them, but the push is gentle, as if Caranthir fears Amras will splinter. Or shatter. Or vanish in smoke.

Hmph. You do that the one time, _the one time_ , and no one ever lets you forget it.

Maglor is shaking now, and has hunched his shoulders, and Amras watches as Caranthir sighs and crouches beside him, with a muttered “Why is it always me, I am not cut out for this. . .”

Amras doesn’t know why his older brother – well, actually, _one_ of his older brothers now, seeing how he has more than one again! – thinks he has to be the one to welcome the dead when, after all, Amras is more than happy to help.

He dances over to stand on Maglor’s other side, but does not stop and crouch beside them. Maglor will not meet his eyes – either of their eyes, in fact – and Caranthir, still gripping his shoulder but now silent too, looks dangerously close to tears himself. So instead, Amras twirls happily around his older brothers – two of them! He has two of them now! – and beams, and beams.

“Ai, stoppit, will you, _both_ of you sillies! We’re here, now – we’re together, again – we’re not hurting, anymore, and we can’t hurt anyone else, ever again – I don’t understand why everyone’s first reaction is always to _cry_!”

Maglor does look up, then, as if drawn to the sound of his voice, and Amras pauses in his dancing to let him look his fill, preening a little at the rapt attention.

 “Pityo,” Maglor says, the syllables leaving his tired dead mouth all in a rush, and his eyes are wet and wide and full of wonder. Really, it’s like he’d forgotten he had that many younger brothers, and that won’t do, that won’t do at all.

“That’s me,” Amras confirms, just in case death really did leech some of Maglor’s memory. It happens, sometimes. When Curufin’s son came through – Amras doesn’t know his name, he had died before the boy was even conceived – he could not place any of their faces, and had only screamed and screamed and screamed if anyone came within touching distance of him.

The screams had only increased when some of Namo’s Maia appeared, likely drawn by the disturbance in the otherwise hushed Halls, and after a scuffle, they had taken the boy away. Now Amras and Caranthir have not seen Curufin since, and Celegorm has returned to them only once.

Amras misses his brothers.

“What did for you?” Caranthir is asking Maglor, now, the impending tears whisked safely away and his voice as business-like as Amras has ever heard it. “The Sea? You fool, did you try to make the crossing?”

“No,” Maglor says, his voice still soft and watery. Amras could have told Caranthir that – he can almost _smell_ the rot, can all but _see_ the glisten of the memory of guts where Maglor’s spirit remembers his flesh. “A knife in the gut while I was sleeping. Bandits, most likely. Never thought I’d say this, but at least I was starved enough that they didn’t think it worth their while to try and take me. Not that I wouldn’t have deserved it.”

“Well, your self-pity is as unbecoming as always,” Caranthir says sharply, standing at last. “But at least you had the decency to get yourself killed – good for you.”

Amras has heard him say this to Curufin and Celegorm too, but Caranthir has never explained his cryptic statement. Maybe this time he will?

Maglor seems to wonder too, if that tilt of his head to the side is any indication.

“I mean it, ‘Laure,” Caranthir says harshly, releasing his shoulder. “Much as I pity Maitimo, and Tel- it was a stupid thing to do, and he knew it.” Maglor’s eyes widen.

“Oh,” he says, and this time he stands too, shaky but on his feet again at last. “He’s not-“

“No,” Caranthir says shortly. “And never will be.”  

“Why do you always do this, Moryo?” Amras asks, irritably, and if it comes out as a whine – well, he feels justified in it! He trails after his brothers as Caranthir starts walking, leading Maglor further into the Halls, where they usually dwell apart from the others who are only here for a short spell before they can make their way back out into the light, the warmth, the world. “I hate it when you treat me like a child and don’t tell me things! Just you wait ‘til Maitimo gets here – you won’t be the oldest anymore then! Actually, now ‘Laure is the oldest here, you have to heed _him_! ‘Laure, make him tell me!”

Another sob from up ahead seems to come from Maglor, though Amras can’t imagine why he would still be _crying_. It’s over, isn’t it? They’re done, right?

A thought strike Amras then, and he darts up ahead, cutting around in front of Caranthir to come and stand in front of Maglor. “Was Telvo with you?”

Maglor gives an undignified hiccup, and Amras giggles; then Maglor shakes his head, his eyes tearing up again, and Amras sighs.

“Oh. All right,” says Amras, a little sad that his best-favorite-closest brother still hasn’t returned to him, but also a little happy because at least this means that somewhere, his twin is still enjoying his life. “Well, whenever he’s ready, I can’t wait to see him again.”

 

 


	7. Nerdanel and Feanor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day #7, Nerdanel and Feanor: Mahtan, Marriage, Reunion, Traveling, Healing

“I intend to marry you someday,” Annoying Princeling says serenely, fully confident that this statement will be met with agreement rather than a fist to anywhere anatomically important.

“And I intend to tell you exactly what I think of that proposal, as soon as my father leaves the room,” Nerdanel replies, conversationally, and pretends not to notice when Mahtan’s shoulders heave.

Annoying Princeling stares at her – in shock that someone would speak so to him, or that she would speak so of her father? Not that Nerdanel cares a whit either way – and she knows she must be imagining things, but it seems that the shock turns to adoration and then swiftly to cunning.

 

~ ~ ~

“I do not know why I married you!” he shouts, and his voice, the voice of an orator, reaches the rafters and roils against them as if to lift them right into the pitchy sky above. 

“Nor do I, you!” she roars, and her voice, the voice of a stonemason, rumbles right beneath his and swallows it whole, like an avalanche that would pull the rafters right into the ground, even from so lofty a height as the sky.  

And that, for the first time since the Trees had gone out, makes Feanor fall silent. They stare each other down from across the room, both heaving, and Nerdanel wonders, idly, when they had come to this.

She is sick of being asked – no, _expected_ – to play the bigger man all the time, but she will try this once, once more, for she can see he is still in turmoil at the news of Finwë’s death. “I cannot imagine how this must affect you, Fëanáro, but your father would not-“

“Do not even say it, whatever pointless comfort you think to offer me,” Feanor snaps, a dangerous tone in his voice. “You could not know, you could not! Do not think that your geniality with my father, or your flippancy with your own, would enable you to understand the depths to my love.”

And oh, that is _it_.

“And do not think that you know all the forms of love, or that whatever you feel for our fallen king will be excuse enough to amend whatever madness you think to commit in his name,” Nerdanel grits through her teeth. “No, do not lie to me!” for oh, her mate has become no better at that pursuit, and never will – he is planning something, and it will be grand, and horrible, and he will do it all for his mad ideas of how love must be shown in ever-increasing gestures or else it will be withdrawn.

But something of what she was trying to do must have made it across, for he nods, and steps a length closer, and lays his hand on her shoulder, and she does not shake him off.

“I will make it right, though,” he says, and for all that he has never Sung, there is power gathering in the back of his throat, and it will out, somehow. She can only hope the outing will not cause too much more damage than has already been done.  

“Leave the children out of it, though,” she says later that long endless night, when he comes to her and tells her he is riding back to Tirion.

He nods but does not meet her eyes, and later she will regret that she was not the first to demand of him, or of them, an oath.

It is a terrible thing to regret, but then, the Oath they do take is a terrible thing too.

 

~ ~ ~

When word comes that Fëanor wishes to speak with her, Nerdanel laughs and laughs until the messenger, a Vanyarin youth of only some thousand-odd years, has to help her to a seat, and then hovers above her anxiously as she sobs until she chokes.

“Will you be well?” he asks, poor young thing, and she realizes that he does not know who she is, that she was married to the legendary prince who is for the first time voicing demands from the Halls.

“I do not know, sweet, but I appreciate the thought all the same,” she says, and she even manages a smile for him when she looks up.

His return smile is wavering, and worried, but he leaves her alone as she asks and rides back with her vehement denial of Fëanor’s request likely ringing in his ears.

His name is Sanya, she learns eventually, as the young messenger from the Halls is sent to her again and again over the years, Feanor’s request never changing in tone or in urgency. “Law-abiding” – how fitting a name, when Sanya is pure, and strong, and everything that neither Nerdanel nor her former mate have been since almost the dawn of her people. He is also good-hearted enough that he does not deny her the comfort she eventually asks of him – and better-hearted still, that when she asks if he cares for her, he tells her he does.

They are happy, then, and the Halls send no more messengers for a long time.

 

~ ~ ~

It doesn’t last, of course. Eventually a Maia is sent for her, and not wanting to see the damage that such a creature could wreak on her father’s people, or Sanya’s good heart, she goes.

She mislikes leaving her body just lying there in the Gardens, but she is not given another option, for Fëanor cannot come to her.

“They tell me you have a suitor,” his spirit says to hers, when finally they are left alone. Even after all this time in the Halls he looks old, and drawn, and weary, and his voice is nothing like the fiery brand it used to be, applying itself to the hearts and minds of all who heard (all but her) and driving them forward into madness.

Now, it sounds as thin and tired as he does, even in the spirit alone.

“I know I should not ask it of you,” Feanor continues, in his new soft wandering murmur, “but I cannot help it. Do you still-“

She cuts him off with a sharp gesture.

“Do not even think to finish that question, Fëanáro. Not to me.” She is not even angry, just tired, of a sudden. It amazes her that he can even ask, or begin to ask, after all he has said – all he has done - but she cannot say it is completely unexpected.

“Very well.” And although his voice has not changed, she knows, _knows_ , that he thinks he is gearing up to make some heroic, self-sacrificing gesture that will make up for everything. “I will take Míriel’s choice, then, and remain here for all time, so that you may be with him.”

The very _nerve_ of him. . . 

A slap means less in the Halls, perhaps, because there is no weight she can put behind it, but it resounds all the same. And although there can be no pain, he looks at her in such _surprise_ – ever the princeling, even after everything else.

“I need no dispensation from the Valar, Fëanáro Curufinwë, and certainly no magnanimous gestures of release from _you_. After everything you have done to your people – to your sons, Fëanáro, our _boys_ , we have lost two for _good_ they tell me – I am damn well entitled to live my life as I see fit. As I always have been!”

And if there is a tear in her eye when she wakes, and sits up, and flexes her arms to make sure that Namo’s Maia have left her hröa intact, well. And if that tear, and others like it, fall as she rides home to Sanya, well – bless him, he does not even ask when she hops from her horse and gathers him to her in a fierce embrace.

 


End file.
